Daily Prompt: Disagree

Rant: A Day in My Life of Disagreements

It seems like every day is composed of my disagreeing with pretty much everything and having to defend myself as gracefully as I can.

Every morning I disagree with my alarm clock. At 7:00 am, it hastily alerts me that I should wake up and I hit the snooze in disagreement with its early morning blaspheme. After some back and forth with the alarm clock, my convincing snoozes finally push the alarm to surrender.

Then, I start reading my morning news alerts, which are all set to send me articles that I disagree with, e.g. anything dealing with Donald Trump or with Hillary Clinton, Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, brutality brought on by police, civilians, and by nations all around the world, and most of my Facebook newsfeed.

After finally deciding to get out of bed, I guzzle a quick protein shake, battle some mild internal disagreements and I head to the gym—the mecca of bodily conflict. I try to go into this with a leveled head (and some pre-workout), because I know that my body will disagree with pretty much everything I do at the gym…until I leave. Unlike a Facebook argument, my body usually just says, “You know? You were right. Thanks for the insight.” Or, something like that.

What follows is a slew of disagreements:

My healthy lunch.

Walking to work/school.

Actually working.

More Facebook and general internet disagreements.

Whether to eat a snack or not.

Walking home.

Where or what to eat for dinner with Olivia.

Oh, someone thinks my recent post is dumb?

Having loud and messy birds in my kitchen.

Going to sleep early so I can be refreshed in the morning.

I’m sure I’ve missed several disagreements in this descriptive model. Especially the side conversations that deal with politics, economics, and religion. Thankfully, I could care less about sports allowing me to virtually agree with anyone on the topic. I accredit this to my former waiter life. “Oh, you like the Redskins? Me too! They remind me of these sizzling redskin potatoes that accompany our delectable porterhouse steak.”
“You’re a Giants fan? Well, I only let my fellow Giants fans know about this one. We have a beautiful, giant, prime cut ribeye, drizzled with a 50-year aged balsamic in the back of the house. We don’t put it on the menu because they sell out too quickly. So, we ration it for our brothers in Eli.”

Okay, I’m done reminiscing.

Despite my daily routine of disagreements, I thank God that I was born in a place lucky enough to be able to do just that. Being a first-gen Cuban, I know first-hand that I dodged a bullet, metaphorically and, potentially, literally. My studies in economics have led me into a world of constant discourse in which disagreements are the norm. I have close friends in which I disagree wholeheartedly on some issues. I publicly post disagreements I have with government policies, bureaucrats, and politicians. I am able to disagree with those of other faiths. I am able to disagree on where I want to eat for crying out loud.

It’s important to note that this a new phenomenon in human history. For most of history, people were more concerned with survival by satisfying the bottom rung of Maslow’s pyramid. People were constantly ruled by oppressive governments, afraid to dissent. In fact, these situations still exist throughout the world. It’s safe to say that this is a super unfortunate reality. For it is through disagreements that we see progress. At the root of the hockey stick of economic growth and general well-being are a bunch of disagreements—disagreements with the status-quo.

Just think, what if nobody disagreed with the idea of walking everywhere?

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Published by Kevin D. Gomez

Kevin D. Gomez is an Instructor of Economics at Creighton University and Program Manager at the Institute for Economic Inquiry. He received his B.S. in Economics and Statistics from Florida State University and his M.A. from George Mason University. Trying to pay it forward by helping noneconomists make sense of the crazy world.
View all posts by Kevin D. Gomez

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